Ain't It Cool News - Review 2

Last Update: 29 October 2002

One of the things I love about sites like
CHUD and AICN is that we can choose to support a film whether
its got a $50 million marketing budget or not. Were
not like most magazines or press outlets, where the size of the
release mandates the size of the coverage. Instead, its
as simple an equation as this: if we like something, we talk about
it. If we like something a lot, we talk about it a lot.

So it doesnt surprise me to see Nick
Nunziata gettin behind Kurt Wimmers still-unreleased
sci-fi action/thinker EQUILIBRIUM, a movie that plays like GATTACA
and THE MATRIX got into the Brundlechamber and emerged as some
uneasy hybrid. What works is downright awesome, and what doesnt
is still pretty good. So why the hell has this been sitting on
a shelf since last summer?

The Grammaton Clerics are part religious
order, part crime-fighting super unit. Cleric John Preston (Christian
Bale) is the best of the best, a hardcore killer who has proven
the intensity of his devotion, paying the highest price there
is. He gave his own wife up for sense crimes. She stopped taking
her Prozium, you see. Prozium is what you take every day, you
see. Several times. Everyone has their watch and their little
injection gun, and when the alarm goes off, you just put the needle
to your neck and SNAP! Instant harmony. Everything is mellow.

Permanently. No highs. No lows. Just a simple
moderate passive acceptance. This is the way it has to be. This
is because of mans own nature, the nature that led to the
third world war. This is because mans nature will inevitably
lead to a fourth war, one that may not be possible to survive.
The Grammaton Clerics are the ones who make sure that other people
dont step out of line. They track down and destroy sense
offenders. And as terrible as it is in FAHRENHEIT 451 when they
destroy books, this is worse. This is the destruction of everything
of any kind that might make you feel or dream or hope or laugh
or cry.

Its life with no reason to live it.

John Prestons wife tried to tell him
that, but he didnt listen. He just kept up his Prozium,
and he made sure his children kept up their Prozium, and he kept
going to work every day, enforcing the law, feeling nothing.

You dont have to be a psychic, or
even a particularly rabid genre fan, to know where the story is
going to go in the broad strokes. Hes going to have some
sort of awakening. Hes going to question the world he lives
in. Hes going to choose something that goes contrary to
his place in society. Hes going to have to fight.

One of my very favorite films is Terry Gilliams
BRAZIL. I love the way Sam Lowry is slowly brought into the real
world though his encounters with Buttle and Tuttle and Jill and
his mother and Mr. Helpmann and Jack Lint. I love the way he finally
chooses to fight back by simply retreating into the dream life
he has built for himself. EQUILIBRIUM gives us a main character
who has a very different reaction when his mask slips a bit and
he suddenly sees the world for what it is. Prestons first
moment of real discomfort comes when he tracks and kills his own
partner, Cleric Partridge, who is played by Sean Bean in a great,
soulful cameo. He gives great brood here for the few minutes hes
in the film. He and Bale have a very interesting dynamic, very
specific. Bean is resigned to the fact that hes a criminal.
He knows hes going to be discovered. He knows hes
going to be destroyed. The joys of a Keats poem are worth it,
though, and he embraces his fate willingly. Hes not strong
enough to fight the system, but he is strong enough to remove
himself from the game. He knows Preston will kill him for his
sense offense, and he doesnt do a thing to stop him.

Not that he could stop him. The first major
action scene in the film is a shootout in the dark that is just
breathtaking. Its original, a great idea executed to perfection,
and in some films, this would be the very best thing you saw.
In this film, its a warm-up for what comes later. Christian
Bale is utterly convincing as a man who training and sedatives
have transformed into a perfectly-balanced weapon, a killing engine
that can be pointed at anyone and simply released.

And we get a great indication of that when
he shows up for his first major incident in the film. Theres
a group of sense criminals holed up in a warehouse where theyve
stored some emotional relics, the sort of thing that stirs up
their passions. Paintings. Music. Poetry. Anything that challenges
you to feel. Bale has the advance team knock out the lights in
a room, then knock out the lights in the hallway outside so that
when he opens the door and enters the room, theres no silhouette.
Theres no anything. Its pitch black. Wimmer stages
this entire first sequence in the absolute black of that room,
illuminating it only with the muzzle flashes from the two guns
that Bale wields with remarkable, almost supernatural precision.
He bends his own body in various bizarre contortions as he does
so, something we later learn is part of the training for the Clerics.
Theyve figured out the mathematical possibility of combat,
and they put themselves in the least statistically possible place
to be hit at each moment of a fight, so hes not just posing
so it looks cool. Hes simply outmaneuvering every shot fired
at him, even as he picks off the people in the room based on where
their shots are fired from. Its a startling burst of kinetic
violence, original in concept and execution, and its not
the best moment in the film. Not by a long shot. And when you
see this scene, and you lose your mind... and if youre a
self-respecting action geek on any level, you WILL lose your mind...
then I want you to remember I said that. What you just saw is
not the best scene in the film. Or the second best. Or even the
fourth best.

Thats what sort of ass-kicking youre
in for.

I think EQUILIBRIUMs got weaknesses.
I think theres a strange sort of narrative hiccup in act
two where Bales character just sort of square-dances in
place for a while. But a lot of that is because Wimmer seems determined
to give Bale room to play, and the results of that can be so striking
that Im willing to overlook anything I dont think
works. Bale goes through his own awakening over the course of
the film, encouraged by supporting players like William Fichtner
(interesting, as always) and Emily Watson (strikingly shot for
the second time this year, and playing a similarly underwritten
role), and there are a few highlights along the way. In particular,
theres a scene involving a Beethoven record that I thought
was very touchingly etched by both Bale and Wimmer, and an action
scene centered around a dog that is just stunning.
EQUILIBRIUMs not a wildly expensive film, and it shows in
some of the establishing shots of this bleak futurescape. Still,
I like the design. Even though things dont look real at
every point, theres a very clean and sterile look to the
world that works to help make the point. This place has been leeched
of everything worthwhile, and its all at the will of Father,
societys benevolent dictator who speaks only by hologram.
The Master Cleric (THE CRADLE WILL ROCKs Angus MacFadyen)
is Fathers spokesman, the one who speaks directly to the
rest of the order, and he and Bale have the most directly antagonistic
relationship in the film. Theres a young Cleric (Taye Diggs)
who believes that Bale is breaking down and starting to feel,
and hes determined to catch him at it. Their relationship
is overplayed, mostly on Tayes end of things, but it pays
off in one of the coolest action beats in the whole film, so again...
Ill take the bad with the good.

I cant praise the film as an action
movie without specifically praising the people who managed to
build the action. Tom Rolf was one of the editors of HEAT, a film
that I thought had supercharged action sequences, and EQUILIBRIUM
hits an equally high mark. Dion Beebe, the cinematographer of
the film, is also responsible for CHICAGO this Christmas, and
the work Ive seen on that film is incredible. Beebe seems
to be especially good at recording motion in a way that allows
us to see the full range of that motion with crystal clarity.
People who complain that they cant follow most action scenes
because of rapid cutting are going to glow with an inner peace
after seeing these scenes, where each cut, each motion, each new
beat of the scene, all seems to be one long, liquid, incredibly
communicative thing that you not only follow, but that you get
sucked into. You feel these action scenes. Mr. Beaks described
this as gun-fu, and Nick at CHUD described it as gun-kata.
Both terms sound about right. Its martial arts, basically,
with guns used not only to fire bullets, but also used as extensions
of the fighter. There is some swordplay here, too, but what idiot
brings a knife to a gunfight? Bale (and what Im sure must
be a team of stunt people) proves to be quite expert with whatever
he picks up, so each scene is different, charged with the energy
of this particular foe or that particular tight corner.
Overall, I think this is a tricky film to sell. I think Nov. 8th
and December 6th, the two dates Ive heard mentioned so far,
both suck. You blew it with BELOW, Dimension. Dont kill
this film, too. Hold it until the spring. Find a two-week window
in March or April where no one else has an action film coming
out. Cut the trailer you need to cut... the trailer you know you
can cut with the amazing footage you have to choose from here...
and start selling this film. Kurt Wimmer started his career writing
movies for the Barbarian Brothers (DOUBLE TROUBLE) and directing
Brian Bosworth (ONE TOUGH BASTARD), and hes written a few
studio movies, including one that I quite liked, the John McTiernan
remake of THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR. This film serves as an announcement,
though, that whatever he did before was a warm up. Hes ready
to step up and start making some serious science-fiction action
films. Studios would do well to start figuring out what theyre
going to do with this guy, because its only a matter of
time before he connects with something and makes his own MATRIX,
his own TERMINATOR 2. Hes got that good an eye for this
stuff. Im still mystified as to why Betty Thomas is making
THE STARS MY DESTINATION for Fox. I mean, I saw I SPY, and as
amiable as it is, its no EQUILIBRIUM when it comes to delivering
hard, stylish, cold-blooded action. This one is a reminder of
what it is that makes us genre fans in the first place.